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What Bit Me? Spot These 11 Bug Bites

Bug bites are irritating, and some can be harmful. Learn to identify the type of bug bite and when to seek emergency medical care.

How to Identify Common Bug Bites and Stings

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Getting a bug bite can be a creepy experience, especially if you don’t know what tiny creature left you with that red, throbbing welt on your skin. Don’t panic. Most bug bites and stings from common insects are harmless and heal quickly. But some bug bites and stings, like those from fire ants, wasps, hornets, and bees, may cause intense pain or even a serious allergic reaction. Others, like poisonous spider bites, require immediate emergency medical care.

Symptoms of bug bites provide clues to the cause and severity. For example, most bug bites cause red bumps with pain, itching, or burning. Some bug bites also feature blisters or welts. Here are some common bug bite clues:

Bedbugs leave a small bite mark on the skin that is red and itchy or causes a serious allergic reaction.

Most bug bites are transmitted directly from the insect and occur outdoors. Two exceptions are bedbugs (tiny mites that live in and near beds) and lice, which spread through contact with an infected person, a comb, or clothing.

Know your own personal risk for having an allergic reaction to a bug bite.

Use pesticide.

Wear protective clothing.

No matter what type of bug bite you have, it is good to know what bit you. Learning to identify a bug bite by how it looks and feels will help you know whether to treat the bug bite at home or seek immediate medical care.

If you have known allergies to bug bites, talk with your physician about emergency care. Some people with severe allergies to bug bites need to have allergy medicine, including an EpiPen, with them always.

About 2,000 cases of the West Nile virus were reported in the United States to the CDC in 2014. Symptoms appear 2 to 14 days after the bite and can include headaches, body aches, fever, vomiting, diarrhea, and a skin rash. People with a more severe West Nile infection may develop meningitis or encephalitis, and have symptoms including neck stiffness, severe headache, disorientation, high fever, and convulsions.

The bite of a parasite-infected mosquito can cause malaria, a rare occurrence in the United States, with only about 1,500 cases reported by the CDC each year. Symptoms are similar to the flu and can include fever, headache, muscle aches, nausea, and vomiting from 10 days to 4 weeks after the bite. Malaria is serious, but it's good to know it is preventable and treatable, according to the CDC.

What do Bedbug Bites Look Like?

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You probably won't feel pain when a bedbug bites, but you may see three or more clustered red marks, often forming a line. Some people develop a mild or severe allergic reaction to the bug's saliva between 24 hours and 3 days later. This can result in a raised, red skin bump or welt that's intensely itchy and inflamed for several days.

How to get rid of bedbug bites? If your bedbug bites cause hives, it may mean a trip to your healthcare provider for treatment, notes the American Academy of Dermatology. Bedbug bites can occur anywhere on your body but typically show up on uncovered areas, such as your neck, face, arms, and hands. It's good to know that although they're common, bedbugs do not carry disease, according to the CDC.

When to See the Doctor for Spider Bites

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Most spider bites are not poisonous and cause only minor symptoms like red skin, swelling, and pain at the site. Other spider bites are a real emergency. If you develop an allergic reaction to a spider bite, with symptoms such as tightness in the chest, breathing problems, swallowing difficulties, or swelling of the face, you need medical care at once. Because spider bites can get infected with tetanus, the CDC also recommends staying on top of your tetanus booster shots and getting one every 10 years.

A bite from a poisonous spider like the black widow or brown recluse is extremely dangerous and can cause a severe reaction. The black widow's bite, which shows up as two puncture marks, may or may not be painful at first. But 30 to 40 minutes later, you may have pain and swelling in the area. Within eight hours, you may experience muscle pain and rigidity, stomach and back pain, nausea and vomiting, and breathing difficulties. You might not have seen the spider that bit you, but always seek medical attention immediately if there's a possibility you could have been bitten by a poisonous spider. Call 911 or the American Association of Poison Control Centers at 800-222-1222.

Brown Recluse Spider Bites Need Immediate Medical Attention

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The brown recluse spider is poisonous and usually lives in dark and unused spaces. Some people feel a small sting followed immediately by a sharp pain, while others don't realize they've gotten a brown recluse bite until hours later. Four to eight hours afterward, the bite may become more painful and look like a bruise or blister with a blue-purple area around it. Later, the bite becomes crusty and turns dark.

Symptoms of a brown recluse spider bite occur within a few hours and include fever, chills, itching, nausea, and sweating. Because some people will have a serious reaction that can lead to kidney failure, seizure, and coma, it's important to get medical care at once, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) National Library of Medicine. Be sure to seek medical attention immediately if you could have been bitten by a poisonous spider, by calling 911 or the American Association of Poison Control Centers at 800-222-1222.

Some Ticks Carry Lyme Disease

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Some tick bites can be dangerous because the insects may carry disease. Black-legged ticks, formerly known as deer ticks, may carry Lyme disease, and dog ticks can spread Rocky Mountain spotted fever. Up to 30,000 cases of Lyme disease are reported each year in the United States.

Symptoms of Lyme disease include a skin rash in the pattern of rings, much like a bull’s-eye on a target, that appears up to a month after the tick bite. You may also have fever, fatigue, headaches, muscle and joint aches, as well as irregular heart rhythms. But 20 to 30 percent of people who get infected never develop a rash. Symptoms such as swollen or painful joints, memory loss, or other autoimmune responses that mimic those of other diseases may present themselves when Lyme disease is in its advanced stages. A diagnosis may remain elusive because many doctors will not initially equate these nonspecific symptoms with Lyme disease.

Rocky Mountain spotted fever from a tick bite is rare, with about 2,500 cases per year in the United States. It causes a fever, a headache, muscle aches, and a skin rash. The rash of pinpoint red spots begins on the ankles and wrists after a few days of fever, but later the rash spreads to the rest of the body; in some people, a rash never develops. Although this infection can be severe — and even fatal — it is preventable and can be successfully treated with prompt medical care, according to the CDC.

Flea Bites Can Lead to Skin Infections

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Symptoms of flea bites may begin within hours after you're bitten, and the bites tend to appear in groups of three or four. You may notice itching, hives, and swelling around an injury or sore, or a rash of small, red bumps that may or may not bleed. Flea bites are most common on your ankles and legs, but may also appear in your armpits, around your waist, and in the bends of your knees and elbows. A flea-bite rash turns white when you press on it and tends to get larger or spread over time. Scratching the rash can lead to a skin infection, according to the NIH National Library of Medicine, and may need medical attention.

In extremely rare cases, fleas are infected with the bacteria that causes plague. The disease can spread from wild rodents to pets and people. Over the past 10 years, as few as 1 and as many as 17 cases of plague were reported in the United States, according to the CDC, most in the rural West. Symptoms of plague include swollen lymph nodes, headache, fever, and chills that appear from one to six days after the bite.

Bee Stings Can Result in Severe Allergic Responses

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Bee stings cause a sharp pain that may continue for a few minutes, then fade to a dull, aching feeling. The area may still feel sore to the touch a few days later. A red skin bump with white around it may appear around the site of the sting, and the area may itch and feel hot to the touch. If you've been stung by a bee before, your body may also have an immune response to the venom in the sting, resulting in swelling where the sting occurred or in an entire area of your body, including your throat and lungs. If you have this type of allergic response, called anaphylaxis, it is a medical emergency that needs treatment immediately. Symptoms of a severe allergy to a bee sting include hives, swelling, trouble breathing, dizziness, cramps, nausea, diarrhea, and even cardiac arrest.

Lice Bites Cause Itchy, Tender Spots

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Lice bites are tiny red spots on the shoulders, neck, and scalp from small parasitic insects that can live on your clothes or in your bedding. Because lice bites are so small, they usually don’t hurt, but they do itch. Some people may develop a larger, uncomfortable skin rash from lice bites. Continual scratching of the itchy spots could lead to an infection, marked by symptoms including swollen lymph nodes and tender, red skin. An infected lice bite may also ooze and crust over; it will need to be treated by a doctor, but lice are not known to carry other diseases.

Ant Bites and Stings Can Become Infected

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Ant bites and stings are typically painful and cause red skin bumps. Some types of ants, like fire ants, are venomous, and their bites can cause a severe allergic reaction. Fire ants bite first to hold on and then sting, giving a sharp pain and a burning sensation. If you're bitten by fire ants, you may see white, fluid-filled pustules or blisters (pictured) a day or two after the sting. These last three to eight days and may cause scars. The bumps may also be itchy and red, and you may have swelling around the site. It's important not to scratch or break open the blisters because they can become infected, notes the American College of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology. Carpenter ant bites are also painful because they spray formic acid into the bite, which causes a burning feeling.

Mite and Chigger Bites Cause Intense Itching

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Mites do not usually spread disease, but their bites can irritate the skin and cause intense itching. Itch mites usually feed on insects but will bite other animals, including people. The bites usually go unnoticed until itchy, red marks develop that may look like a skin rash.

Chiggers are a form of mite that inject their saliva so that they can liquefy and eat skin. In response to a chigger bite, the skin around the bite hardens. The surrounding skin becomes irritated and inflamed (pictured), and an itchy red welt develops.

Mites also cause the condition called scabies, which is contagious from person to person, notes the CDC. Female scabies mites burrow into the skin to lay eggs. When the eggs hatch, the larvae come to the skin's surface. They begin to molt and then burrow back into the skin to feed. This results in a skin rash that may look like acne pimples and create intense itching that gets worse at night. You may also notice light, thin lines on the skin where the mites have burrowed, including between the fingers, in the bends at the wrists and knees, and under jewelry on the wrists and fingers.

Kissing bugs hide in the daytime but emerge at night, often leaving bites on the face and causing a swollen eyelid. In the first few weeks after infection, symptoms of Chagas disease can include fever, fatigue, body aches, headache, rash, a loss of appetite, diarrhea, and vomiting. But in the long term, and even decades later, the CDC notes that about 30 percent of people infected by kissing bugs will develop serious complications of Chagas disease: an enlarged heart, heart failure, abnormal heart rhythm, cardiac arrest, or an enlarged colon, also known as megacolon.